Dessert Atlas · Dessert
Alfajores de Maicena
- Intermediate
- 1 h 30 m
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, leaving a faint perfume.
Ingredients
- 200g cornstarch + 130g flour, the maicena ratio; it is why they melt
- 130g soft butter; 100g sugar; 3 egg yolks; 1 tsp vanilla + zest of 1 lemon
- 1 tsp baking powder; splash of cognac or pisco, optional and traditional
- 400g dulce de leche, repostero (thick) grade, or reduce regular in a pan until it holds a peak
- Grated coconut for rolling the edges; icing sugar
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Chilling to firm: the fridge as binderResting dough: the pause that does the workCreaming butter & sugarFolding: keeping the air in
The words inside
Brandy: Cognac, Armagnac, Calvados & Pisco
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cream butter and sugar; yolks; fold in the sifted cornstarch, flour and baking powder to a tender dough. Chill 30 min. 30 min
- Roll 5mm; cut small rounds; bake 170°C, 10–12 min; they must NOT color; pale is the law; golden is a failure. 12 min
- Cool completely: they are fragile as gossip.
- Sandwich with a thick coin of dulce de leche; roll the exposed edge in coconut; dust or don't.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Creaming butter & sugar 28 recipes
- The butter started at the right temperature: it took a fingerprint and held its shape, neither greasy and slumping nor hard from the fridge.
- It has visibly paled, from yellow towards near-white, and grown in volume, and getting there took minutes rather than seconds.
- The texture is light and aerated: a spoonful is fluffy and holds a soft peak rather than sitting dense on the spoon.
- Rubbed between finger and thumb it is still faintly gritty with undissolved sugar, and not slick or oily.
- It is one homogeneous cream: not split, slackened, or separating into a greasy mass with liquid running out of it.
Where it goes wrong The butter was too warm, or it was beaten well past its point, so the fat softened and gave up the air it had taken: the mixture goes slack and oily and the cake bakes dense and greasy with a sunken middle.
Folding: keeping the air in 34 recipes
- The air was actually built first and it shows: whatever was creamed or whipped has changed colour and grown in volume, pale and light rather than dense.
- The two mixtures were brought closer before being combined: a little of the light one worked into the heavy one first, so the rest is not beaten flat trying to move it.
- Folded and not stirred: a broad implement down through the middle, across the base, up and over, with the bowl turned between strokes.
- Stopped the moment the streaks disappear. It is still visibly aerated and holds its shape briefly when the spoon lifts away.
- Into the tin and into the oven straight away: a batter left standing on the bench gives back the air it was built for.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred until it looked perfectly smooth. Every stroke past the point where the streaks vanish knocks out air that cannot be put back, so the bake comes out dense and short of the tin, and often wet through the middle where there was no structure to hold it.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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